1. Field of the Invention
This application is a 371 of PCT/DE01/04431 Filed Nov. 21, 2001.
The invention relates to an outsole for athletic shoes, in particular football shoes, with cleats tapering conically from their base to their contact surface and molded onto the front sole region and heel region of the sole.
2. Description of Related Art
An outsole of the kind described is known from published German Patent Application DE 37 03 932 A1. Here, cleats which protrude normally from the base geometry of the sole are molded to the sole by a common injection molding process through which the sole is also manufactured. With such cleats the result is a athletic shoe which exhibits good gripping properties, particularly on hard ground.
A athletic shoe is known from German Patent Application DE 24 54 241 A which exhibits so-called sliding prevention profiling in the heel region. For this, provision is made for the portion of the sole of the shoe which curves upwards around the heel to be provided with sliding prevention studs which are reduced in height in relation to the height of the sole cleats. The result of this is that the shoe has a better grip in the ground when the wearer of the shoe wishes or has to take an extended stride at full stretch.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,988,840 discloses a sole for a athletic shoe which is supposed to stand out through particularly good traction on the ground. Here, provision is made for the sole edge region—extending around the entire circumference of the sole—to be provided with cleats, all of which are reduced in height relative to the cleats located in the “inner region” of the sole.
A athletic shoe is known from U.S. Pat. No. 4,327,503 the sole of which is provided with studs. Here, provision is made for the use of both cleats with a greater height and cleats with a reduced height.
Here, it has proved to be disadvantageous that above all with moderately hard ground, for example superficially frozen ground, contact between the foot and the ground is undesirably hard. In addition, with such ground stability is reduced since a “stilt effect” is produced in that the surface supporting the foot lies at least the height of the cleats above the ground.
Therefore, the underlying object of the invention is to develop a athletic shoe of the kind known previously such that the foot slides in better on contact with the ground even with moderately hard ground. In addition, the “stilt effect” is to be reduced so that more stable contact between the foot and the ground is possible.